8 MOSS ET AL . TA B L E 1 Mechanisms shaping diaspora activists’ responses to proxy punishment Commitment to political activism Host-country social capital Response Weak Weak (1) Going silent Strong Strong (2) Fighting back Strong Weak (3) Navigating between principled and protective action by signalling, cutting ties, or self-censoring that proxy punishment was the primary factor preventing them from voicing their opposition to home-country regimes. A Libyan-Canadian respondent, for instance, attested that her emigrant father forbade discussion of Gaddafi online or with her friends ‘in case it put his family back home in danger’. Prior to 2011, Syrians and Libyans confirmed that the presence of real and perceived regime informants in their communities and regime surveillance of their online activities pressured them to keep quiet for the same reason. A Syrian interviewee from Manchester recalled, [Pro-regime Syrians] would take part in our community affairs and gala dinners, but we would never have the confidence or relaxation to speak in front of them openly about anything to do with the regime. For fear for ourselves, because we were going regularly back home, or for our family back home. These respondents were not yet committed to anti-regime activism, so going silent was perceived as a necessary obligation and an obvious strategy to protect their families at home. Furthermore, these respondents did not report possessing any form of social capital that might have helped them to offset the costs of speaking out against regimes. While most of these individuals moved abroad to escape a lack of opportunities and freedom at home, they purposefully eschewed activities considered ‘political’ and ones that promoted free speech. In a self-reinforcing, cyclical fashion, their strategy to go silent isolated them from the kinds of social capital that could have provided support for antiregime activism. Accordingly, they lacked both the ‘will’ and the ‘way’ to engage in high-cost activism and express their anti-regime sentiments. During the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, egregious acts of violence by the regime against peaceful protesters led Syrian and Libyan respondents to change their responses (hence their inclusion in the sample of activists). Suddenly facing a situation in which their co-nationals were being imprisoned and slaughtered for demanding basic freedoms, interviewees were confronted with a new moral choice: either remain silent to protect their families—which came to be perceived as selfish—or become active on behalf of the broader cause for dignity and democracy for all. As events in the home-country increased their commitment to the anti-regime cause, this led respondents to transition from being silent to (b) openly fighting back, or (c) navigating these risks, as detailed below. That said, because the Syrian revolution did not lead to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government, the resurgence of regime control in Syria re-induced silence across the diaspora and refugee communities in the years following (Pearlman, 2016). The threat of proxy punishment also prevented Syrian refugees from providing testimony in Germany and Sweden about former regime officials’ crimes against humanity, thus further insulating the regime from international accountability for its brutality (Human Rights Watch, 2017). Respondents likewise described the moral dilemma and ‘huge pressure’ that Syrian activists have experienced as a result of recent threats and intimidations against their families. ‘I am free to express my opinion, but not if it causes harm to other people’, one respondent argued from his residence in Europe. ‘If it causes harm to me, I am responsible for myself. But I cannot be responsible for the harm on other people’. The threat of proxy punishment therefore has continued to deter many anti-regime Syrians from taking a stand as Assad and his allies reasserted their iron-fisted rule.